Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tails: The Adventures of Big Johnson Bone, Frontier Hero is a prequel

Prequel

A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...

 to the Eisner Award

Eisner Award

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, and sometimes referred to as the Oscar Awards of the Comics Industry, are prizes given for creative achievement in American comic books. The Eisner Awards were first conferred in 1988, created in response to the...

-winning comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 Bone

Bone (comics)

Bone is an independently published graphic novel series originally serialized in 55 irregularly released issues from 1991 to 2004. Bone was drawn and written by Jeff Smith....

by Jeff Smith

Jeff Smith (cartoonist)

Jeff Smith is an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the self-published comic book series Bone. His current series, RASL, focuses on an art thief who hops through dimensional barriers, hiding out on various parallel worlds.-Early life and education:Jeff Smith was born in McKees...

. It was initially published in 1998 as a three issue mini-series before being collected in a trade paperback (ISBN 1-888963-06-9) in 2000.

Whereas the other spin-off, Rose

Rose (comics)

Rose is a prequel to the Eisner-winning comic book Bone. It was written by Bone creator Jeff Smith and illustrated by Charles Vess, who earned an Eisner nomination for his work on it...

, focuses on the valley people from the story, Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tails focuses on the formation of Boneville, the hometown of the Bones that is never actually seen in the story. The series is drawn but not written by Smith. The writer is Tom Sniegoski. The back-up feature included in the trade paperback collection, Riblet, is written by Sniegoski and drawn by Usagi Yojimbo

Usagi Yojimbo

is a comic book series created by Stan Sakai in 1987. In 2011 IGN ranked Miyamoto Usagi 92nd in the top 100 comic books heroes.-Concept:Set primarily at the beginning of Edo period of Japan , with anthropomorphic animals replacing humans, the series features a rabbit ronin, Miyamoto Usagi, whom...

creator Stan Sakai

Stan Sakai

is a third-generation Japanese American Cartoonist comic book creator. He is best known as the creator of the comic series Usagi Yojimbo. -Biography:...

. The series was yet again reprinted in the collection Tall Tales, released in August 2010.